Source: Lowvelder.co.zaBy Dex KotzeLast week I was invited by SANParks to accompany the international media on a four-day visit to Letaba Rest Camp in Kruger National Park (KNP). The objective was to expose these correspondents to the war on rhino poachers. Newsrooms from across the world were given insight into the crisis when they were taken to two recently killed rhino in the Letaba region and witnessed an autopsy being performed by Mr Kobus de Wet, head of criminal investigation in the park. We were driven for 40 minutes from Letaba and walked the last three kilometres to the carcasses. Accompanied by several anti-poaching rangers, we walked in eerie silence in single file for roughly 30 minutes. Ahead we could see about two dozen vultures circling in the sky. We knew we were close when the nauseating stench of the carcasses, scorching for three days in the sun, assailed our senses. Only one of the two rhino was dehorned – the anti-poaching unit found the horn early Monday morning while in pursuit of the poachers who had discarded the evidence when they fled back to Mozambique. De Wet explained that an autopsy was always performed to extract the bullet from the carcass for forensic evidence. The autopsy lasted about two hours and it was found that a bullet from a .458 rifle had penetrated the rhino’s lungs. One female ranger emotionally mentioned that she had been on duty when about 50 rhino were savagely killed this year alone. Most of the poachers caught were in their late twenties, which proved that they were opportunists and not necessarily old Renamo soldiers who downed their weapons 21 years ago when a peace accord was struck with the Frelimo government. The next day we attended the handover of a Gazelle military helicopter to SANParks by the Ichikowitz Family Foundation in association with Paramount, a leading African aerospace and defence group. The Gazelle had been configured by Paramount’s Advanced Technology Division to increase areas that could be traversed and also facilitate air support at night. Critical parts of this helicopter’s capabilities are its speed (up to 310km/h) and night-vision-capable cockpit. SANParks promptly held a demonstration of a poaching-gang arrest, using helicopters, automatic rifles and sniffer dogs. More....

Source: Eturbonews.comBy Hongxiang Huang, Estacio ValConservationists in northern Mozambique, where an average of three to four elephants are being poached a day, have implicated local authorities in the killing spree. Rangers say the weapons used include helicopters and heavy-calibre guns normally used by military forces. In Niassa National Reserve, where elephant numbers have dropped from more than 20,000 in 2009 to about 9,000 earlier this year, Frelimo has been accused of using the proceeds of ivory sales to fund its 10th anniversary congress in nearby Pemba last year. Conservationists say that blood money from ivory trafficking was used to fuel tensions in the run-up to elections in Mozambique. Municipal elections were held in late November 2013; and presidential, parliamentary and regional assembly elections will be held on October 15 next year. Violent flare-ups between the ruling party Frelimo and the opposition Renamo in recent months have led to fears that the civil war which ravaged Mozambique from 1975 to 1992 may be rekindled. Rangers involved in anti-poaching patrols in Niassa, who did not want to be named for fear of losing their jobs, said they had noticed the use of heavy artillery and helicopters in poaching activities in the lead-up to the Frelimo conference in September 2012. The rangers said they had been excluded from an area near the party’s district headquarters in Mecula, near the Niassa reserve, where the carcasses of more than 50 elephants had been stacked. Their efforts to report the slaughter to police officials and border guards were fruitless. A report on poaching in neighbouring Quirimbas National Park in Cabo Delgado province by the Mozambican tourism ministry, in late 2011, noted that poachers were using “sophisticated weapons” and helicopters. A private tourism operator in the national park, Jabobs von Landsberg, said at least 89 elephants had been poached in his 35,000ha concession area of the 750,000ha national park in the past 18 months. Yet before 2009 when the poaching started to take off, elephant numbers in his tourism concession had steadily increased from the end of the civil war to about 150. António Frangoulis, a criminologist at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo and a former Frelimo luminary, said he had received reports from various sources claiming that local authorities were conniving in the poaching and that military weapons were being used. “We are talking about weapons normally used by the police and military forces,” he said. “We are talking about the involvement of official authorities.” Frangoulis was a member of parliament and head of the Mozambican police investigative division until he was sacked in 2009 for criticising Frelimo. More....

Source: Mondediplo.comBy Hongxiang Huang, Estacio ValoiConservationists say that blood money from ivory trafficking was used to fuel tensions in the run-up to elections in Mozambique. Municipal elections were held in late November 2013; and presidential, parliamentary and regional assembly elections will be held on October 15 next year. Violent flare-ups between the ruling party Frelimo and the opposition Renamo in recent months have led to fears that the civil war which ravaged Mozambique from 1975 to 1992 may be rekindled. Conservationists in northern Mozambique, where an average of three to four elephants are being poached a day, have implicated local authorities in the killing spree. Rangers say the weapons used include helicopters and heavy-calibre guns normally used by military forces. In Niassa National Reserve, where elephant numbers have dropped from more than 20,000 in 2009 to about 9,000 earlier this year, Frelimo has been accused of using the proceeds of ivory sales to fund its 10th anniversary congress in nearby Pemba last year. Rangers involved in anti-poaching patrols in Niassa, who did not want to be named for fear of losing their jobs, said they had noticed the use of heavy artillery and helicopters in poaching activities in the lead-up to the Frelimo conference in September 2012. The rangers said they had been excluded from an area near the party’s district headquarters in Mecula, near the Niassa reserve, where the carcasses of more than 50 elephants had been stacked. Their efforts to report the slaughter to police officials and border guards were fruitless. A report on poaching in neighbouring Quirimbas National Park in Cabo Delgado province by the Mozambican tourism ministry, in late 2011, noted that poachers were using “sophisticated weapons” and helicopters. A private tourism operator in the national park, Jabobs von Landsberg, said at least 89 elephants had been poached in his 35,000ha concession area of the 750,000ha national park in the past 18 months. Yet before 2009 when the poaching started to take off, elephant numbers in his tourism concession had steadily increased from the end of the civil war to about 150. More....

Source: Chronicle.co.zwBy Prosper NdlovuRampant poaching and threats to political stability posed by the rebel Afonso Dhlakama-led Renamo in Mozambique are serious regional issues, which should be dealt with urgently, officials said yesterday. Heads of delegates attending the ongoing 8th Session of the Zimbabwe-South Africa Joint Permanent Commission on Defence and Security in Bulawayo called for a lasting solution to the Mozambican issue and a quick end to poaching activities. Dhlakama is hiding in the bush and has recently been engaged in sporadic attacks with the Mozambican military with some casualties reported. “We commit ourselves to regional peace and stability but we remain concerned with developments in Mozambique and eastern DRC among others,” Defence Secretary Mr Martin Rushwaya said in his address. He added: “It is our sincere hope that lasting solutions be found to bring the much needed stability to pave way for regional development and prosperity.” South African Director-General and Secretary for Defence Dr Sam Makhulu Gulube said the recent election of Zimbabwe into the Sadc Troika was critical towards addressing emerging security challenges in the region. He said: “There is no doubt in our minds that your leadership in the Troika will steer our organisation to overcome many of the emerging and evolving security challenges our region faces. In particular, the prevailing threat to security and stability posed by Renamo in our neighbouring country, Mozambique, is a regional concern.” Dr Gulube said the region should consider setting up a standby army to respond to immediate crises and called for ways of exploring matters related to inter-operability of military and security equipment.

Source: Isn.ethz.chBy J. Peter PhamFrom the Janjaweed militia of Sudan to the Central African Republic’s Séléka alliance, rebels across Africa are relying on money generated by poaching. What’s fueling this unfortunate phenomenon? According to J. Peter Pham, it’s the demands of increasingly prosperous Asian clients.Last week, former rebels loyal to the opposition Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) announced that they were abandoning the twenty-one year old peace accord with the government of the southern African country after army troops overran a remote jungle base. The military action followed a spate of attacks on arms depots as well as civilian buses earlier this year. A return to the 1975-1995 civil war could threaten the economic boom which Mozambique has been experiencing in recent years, fueled by coal mining operations as well as the world’s largest natural gas discovery in the past decade. While grievances with the government may have motivated this latest rebellion, it is money from illegal wildlife products that is financing the violence.

But if RENAMO is able to once again mount an insurgency, it won’t be because the movement has much by way of popular support (its support has dwindled with each election since it entered politics and RENAMO leader Afonso Dhlakama barely received one-sixth of the votes cast in the 2009 presidential election) or because it is once again backed by white-minority regimes in neighboring Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, or South Africa (both countries have transitioned to majority rule). Rather it will be because of the lifeline which it has managed to grasp by poaching, both in Mozambique and in South Africa, whose Kruger National Park sits right on the border. South African officials report that poachers—90 percent of whom they believe to be operating across the border—had killed 536 rhinoceroses during the first half of 2013, making it likely that this year’s toll will exceed the 668 slaughtered last year.

Once sawed off, the ungulates’ horns are trafficked to East Asia—Vietnam and China are, respectively, the largest and second-largest markets—where they fetch upwards of $80,000 per kilogram. Since the average rhino horn weighs about nine kilograms and the loss rate is about 2.5 animals per day in just South Africa, what one looking at is a trade worth $657 million annually—and that is counting just the rhinos poached in one country. While not every kill can be laid at the door of RENAMO, the big jump in poaching the last few years parallels the return to the bush of the hardcore remnant of the group following its most recent electoral trouncing and interviews with both law enforcement officials and conservationists indicate that it also plays a lucrative role as a middle man in cases where the slaughter is carried out by poor local people. (Trading in illegal animal products is nothing new the Mozambican rebels who, during the late 1970s and 1980s, often with the collusion of South Africa’s apartheid-era military and intelligence services, established a rather efficient ivory harvesting operation which generated hundreds of millions of dollars to not only destabilize Southern Africa’s “frontline” states, but also line the pockets of corrupt regime officials in Pretoria.) More....

Last week, former rebels loyal to the opposition Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) announced that they were abandoning the twenty-one year old peace accord with the government of the southern African country after army troops overran a remote jungle base. The military action followed a spate of attacks on arms depots as well as civilian buses earlier this year. A return to the 1975-1995 civil war could threaten the economic boom which Mozambique has been experiencing in recent years, fueled by coal mining operations as well as the world’s largest natural gas discovery in the past decade. While grievances with the government may have motivated this latest rebellion, it is money from illegal wildlife products that is financing the violence.

But if RENAMO is able to once again mount an insurgency, it won’t be because the movement has much by way of popular support (its support has dwindled with each election since it entered politics and RENAMO leader Afonso Dhlakama barely received one-sixth of the votes cast in the 2009 presidential election) or because it is once again backed by white-minority regimes in neighboring Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, or South Africa (both countries have transitioned to majority rule). Rather it will be because of the lifeline which it has managed to grasp by poaching, both in Mozambique and in South Africa, whose Kruger National Park sits right on the border. South African officials report that poachers—90 percent of whom they believe to be operating across the border—had killed 536 rhinoceroses during the first half of 2013, making it likely that this year’s toll will exceed the 668 slaughtered last year.

Once sawed off, the ungulates’ horns are trafficked to East Asia—Vietnam and China are, respectively, the largest and second-largest markets—where they fetch upwards of $80,000 per kilogram. Since the average rhino horn weighs about nine kilograms and the loss rate is about 2.5 animals per day in just South Africa, what one looking at is a trade worth $657 million annually—and that is counting just the rhinos poached in one country. While not every kill can be laid at the door of RENAMO, the big jump in poaching the last few years parallels the return to the bush of the hardcore remnant of the group following its most recent electoral trouncing and interviews with both law enforcement officials and conservationists indicate that it also plays a lucrative role as a middle man in cases where the slaughter is carried out by poor local people. More....

The demand for ivory has increased worldwide. Rebel groups in central Africa have joined the trade.They are killing elephants and sell their tusks to get money for better weapons. “Poaching and the potential connections to other criminal and terrorist activities are a serious threat to peace and security in Central Africa," says UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. The UN chief noted that the poachers are using stronger and better weapons to kill elephants. Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel outfit known by its acronym, LRA, is one of those groups that have used the yields from illegal ivory trade to finance their activities. According to UN figures, the LRA has killed more than 100,000 people in Central Africa over the past 25 years. The fighters also abducted between 60,000-100,000 children in order to recruit them as child soldiers. It is considered as one of the most brutal rebel groups in the world. Its leader, Joseph Kony, is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The LRA is still active in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in South Sudan and in the Central African Republic. According to analysts, the group previously received its funds from the government of Sudan - but that support has diminished because of international pressure. In search of new capital sources, the group has turned to poaching. More....

Circling 600 feet above the ground, its thermal camera trained on the scrubland below, the drone keeps silent watch for its target. When a telltale white blur appears on screen, the aircraft will drop closer to earth to confirm the identity of its quarry before summoning armed backup. This is not the militant strongholds of Afghanistan or Pakistan but the African bush. The target is the critically-endangered black rhino and those illegally hunting it. As the demand for rhino horn soars, driven by buyers in Asia for its reputed medicinal properties, so too does the sophistication of the poachers. Faced with hunting gangs using helicopters, night-vision goggles and high-powered rifles, those protecting the rhinos are also being forced to up their game. This weekend, The Daily Telegraph witnessed the first flight of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, or drone, in pursuit of suspected poachers in South Africa. The small, lightweight, battery-powered Falcon drones can be launched by hand in minutes and fly over a range of five miles for up to 90 minutes. Fitted with high-resolution infrared cameras, they can pick out elephants, rhinos and lions as well as anyone that might be tracking them. More....

There are no final or totally verifiable figures for the numbers of elephants slaughtered for their ivory in 2012. However, reports from Cameroon, DR Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic suggest a massive and continuing rise in killings and, ominously, the involvement of military and criminal groups such as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), the Sudanese Janjaweed militia, Chadian poaching gangs and a ring of well-established Darfurian smugglers.CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), Resolve (an NGO focused on stopping the LRA) and UN data all point towards a growth in ivory poaching across a wide belt of Central Africa – all in areas affected by insurgent or militia activity. Conservationists in 2012 generally focused on South African rhino poaching, which continues to rise at a catastrophic rate, with over 633 animals killed up to 19th December last year – a 19 per cent rise on the previous year and almost double the number of rhinos killed in 2010. But now Central Africa’s elephants seem at even greater risk than South Africa’s rhinos in a region where militias operate with relative impunity. The inability of governments to control much of their own territory, let alone multiple borders, makes any form of viable control and protection virtually impossible.Central Africa’s ivory warsThe involvement of militias and rebel groups in ivory poaching and smuggling is nothing new. During the late 1970s and 1980s both UNITA in Angola and Renamo in Mozambique (with the active participation of elements in South Africa’s special forces and Military intelligence) were heavily involved in the killing of elephants and the export of illegal ivory via routes facilitated by Military Intelligence, through Pretoria. Many of those involved in South Africa’s Special Forces had been professional hunters, game park wardens or in other ways involved in the wildlife business before being trained for bush warfare. They helped UNITA and the Mozambican resistance movement establish efficient ivory harvesting operations. The sale of the tusks in East Asia brought in funds that went into further destabilization of the Southern African frontline states, though much went into the pockets of South African officers and intelligence officials, as Stephen Ellis identified in his extensive research in the 1990s. More....